Action County: Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards has only worked at Summit High School for eight months, and already he has the biggest office in the building.”The weight room is my office,” the school’s first year strength and conditioning coach said.Edwards’ part-time position has him at SHS each weekday afternoon from 2:30 to about 6:30 – Four daily office hours, if you will.”People come in from pretty much every sports team,” Edwards said. “Some teams have more structured workouts then others.”The number of athletes Edwards works with on a given day varies between 15 and 35. Regardless of the number, he’s willing to take on any motivated student that walks through his door. Edwards mainly teaches his students how to execute explosive and plyometric maneuvers that are related to typical sports movements.

“I write up workouts for people, teach them the proper technique and try to motivate them,” Edwards said. “We don’t focus too much on body building. Most of the lifting that’s done is just to make sure the body is strong as a whole.”Edwards, who was hired in August, never had any doubts about wanting to work with the Tigers.”I looked in the newspaper and saw a list of all the coaches they were hiring at the high school,” he said. “One of them was strength and conditioning coach and I thought, ‘That’s me.'”Edwards said he developed an interest in the strength and conditioning field after he underwent shoulder surgery to repair a baseball injury sustained during his sophomore year in college. After earning a degree in fitness and wellness from Lee University in Tennessee, Edwards moved on to the University of Colorado to pursue a master’s degree in kinesiology and applied physiology.Edwards began his stint at CU as an intern before quickly moving up the ranks to grad assistant, then assistant strength coach. To say he put in many long days working with Buffaloes athletes would be an understatement.”I needed to complete 300 hours for my internship,” Edwards said. “I had them done in the first five weeks I was there.”

The Gary Barnett-led CU football team began two-a-days around the same time Edwards arrived. The result for the newcomer was work days that began at 5:30 a.m. and didn’t end until dinner time at the earliest.”I never worked less than 70 hours a week,” he said. Edwards coached athletes from a variety of teams during his time at CU and eventually began to focus on men’s golf, women’s tennis, women’s soccer, cross country, track and skiing.Edwards decided to try his hand at business after putting in three and a half years to earn his master’s degree. He founded Efficient Performance Training in Boulder, which he ran for six years before moving to Summit with his wife, Emily.”My wife and I wanted to get out of Boulder because it was getting too crowded,” Edwards said. “And she was offered a local job as a CPA, which was a great opportunity for her.” Edwards’ entrepreneurial pursuit is on hold for now, but he still keeps busy outside of the high school.”I work part-time fitting post-operative cold therapy devices for people who have had shoulder or knee surgery,” he said. Having the school’s biggest office hasn’t stopped Edwards from wanting to branch out.

“The hardest part about the job is not having enough space,” he said. “And we’re working real hard on that by trying to raise money for a weight room expansion.”Chris EdwardsDecade Born: 1970sFavorite Team: New York YankeesFavorite Band: MetallicaFastball or Curveball: Fastball

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